Quite a lot of British comics characters, some of which were published in Portugal, was conceived by brilliant writers and artists, and we have already posted about some of them, as well as about some of the characters they created. And it is sad that nowadays they are virtually unknown to the general public.

But the 50's, 60's and 70's saw the debut of some curious series, and Zip Nolan is certainly one of them. The main character is a North American Highway Patrolman (!) that fights criminals based largely on his intuition and frequently ignoring the instructions of his superiors. His adventures appeared between 1963 and 1974 in the British comic Lion, later merged with Valiant, where it lasted until 1976.

The stories were two or three pages long. Their readers were invited to discover clues that lead to finding the perpetrators, and were called Spot The Clue With Zip Nolan Highway Patrol.

The artist who started the series was Joe Colquhoun, and many of the arguments were written by Michael Moorcock, a prolific scriptwriter who worked on several series for Fleetway. Later, Reg Bunn, who we have already mentioned about The Spider, took over the series, as well as the Italian artist Roberto Diso.

Zip Nolan was occasionally published in Portuguese comic books, but with little sucess and, as far as we know, only a few fans. We have found two adventures in issues 99 and 105 of the comic Selecções do Mundo de Aventuras. In Britain, the adventures of this character were reprinted in Albion #2.

This page was drawn by Reg Bunn, and it was published in the 28 November 1964 issue of Lion. However, it has no other indication besides a handwritten note at the top: "Lion 28Nov 6x ½ scale Keep the one Zip (97). It also has a stamp on the bottom with the number 9693. The page is a set of three strips glued together on the back. The size of the drawings is 50.5 by 38.5 cm, and the paper is 53.4 by 42.6 cm long, approximately. The image shown has a resolution of 100 dpi and it can be enlarged to a 300 dpi version with a click of the mouse.